Monday, May 03, 2010

Road Trip

I am heading down to St. Louis next month for a Brewers game at Busch Stadium. Actually two of them. Came up with the idea a couple of months back and put the wheels into motion. Did the research, inquired with some people that live down there, checked the maps. It doesn't seem to be that far to go to see a ball game, check out a stadium and city.

What I didn't do was factor in the friend who drags his feet. First it was getting him to commit. That wasn't too bad. Then it was deciding on tickets. Typically we like to walk around a place and check out the view points. So we decided on cheap tickets for Friday's game and some good ones for Saturday. But he didn't want to pay the fees for Saturday's game. Had no problem with that for Friday but no fees for Saturday. Ok. Then he wanted to check with someone locally who could get them. I asked my friend Chilly. He was willing to pick some up. My friend was calling the cousin of some dude he knows, thinking we could crash at her place too. Like that would happen. College student allows stranger friends of a cousin to crash at her place for a couple days. That only happens in Penthouse letters.

Then it got interesting last night. My friend calls in a panic saying they only have $85 and $147 tickets left. What? He wanted to avoid fees and now the tickets are nearly sold out. Great! This doesn't seem right to me. I go online and to me it appears that ticket service isn't working. No problem. We can always go to Stub Hub. So we do and get some tickets cheaper than we would.

But now he mentions he needs this friend's college cousin to get the other tickets. Wait, I thought we had tickets to Friday's game already? I thought wrong. Arrrggghhhh!

So we take care of Saturday's tickets. Now I have printed tickets with Albert Pujols' mug on them. That ain't pretty!

So what about lodging? He tells me he'll take care of the hotel. I did a quick check and found the place we were considering had dropped rates. I sent an email letting him know and reminded him to take care of it. This morning I see an email from Hotwire mentioning really cheap rates but we don't know the hotel until after we buy. I do a quick search and figure out that the worst we will be is a mile from the stadium but we'll likely be about 1/2 to 2/3 miles away if we go with the mystery hotel that is 30 bucks cheaper. I send him the info and he comes back wtih "you want to take care of it or should I?" Mother Fugger! I am fed up with this. I book it.

So we have tickets to one game, a room not too far from the stadium, and a rough plan. Dare I ask who is going to drive? What a silly question.